Time and Twinford (the unlimited rice pudding remix)

Chapter One

Remix of 'Throughout All Of Time And Twinford' by blackers-donuts on Tumblr - a quick google search should track it down. Not a very cohesive plot, and it rambles considerably in places, but all I wanted was for these guys to meet up and trade some clever quips (and explosions). I don't know how well I succeeded, and this ended up much longer than I anticipated. Oh well. Enjoy!

Also, please excuse all the metaphors and allusions. Turns out I'm just as fond as those things as Seven is; I swear it's like we share the same head sometimes...

Agent Bob belongs to goldstarsforall, who is also on Tumblr and is a generally fantastic person.

Onto the story!

Chapter One

Ruby sees the woman for the first time during lunch on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, although 'first time' is probably the wrong phrase to use. Rather, Ruby recognizes the woman there and then, and she is thrown momentarily because she hadn't ever expected to see her again – not now, not ever. It's only through the fence – through the barrier separating the school from the street outside – so she could have easily been mistaken for thinking that tall, glamorous figure is who she thinks it is.

But then the woman turns, head swivelling smoothly and almost mechanically, like a sniper sighting her prey, and then the rest of her body turns too and she lowers her large, oversized sunglasses to meet Ruby's eyes properly.

And she winks.

And she smiles.

It's a horrible little smile, one that promises all numbers of nasty things. Ruby shivers all over, and instead of waiting for something terrible or inevitable to happen, grabs the arm of the person closest to her – who happens to be Clancy Crew.

"Quick," she says, wiping the rain off her glasses, which are quickly beginning to drip with water, and she gestures wildly to the street beyond the gates. "The woman. Out there – can you see her?"

Clancy squints and stares and glances and really does try to look, but the rain's picking up again and there doesn't appear to be anybody on the street anymore. "I can't see any woman, Rube. You sure you saw someone?"

"I – " Ruby shrugs, and then nudges him with her elbow. "Let's get inside. C'mon, I'm soaked through."

He acquiesces easily enough, although he keeps shooting her questioning glances all the way back to fifth-period Double English. "Seriously, Ruby, you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Ruby shrugs again, and says something evasive and distracting, and before long, they're talking about something inane and unimportant. But she's not okay, not really, because Clancy is more on the nose than he realizes. She has seen a ghost, or perhaps a dead woman walking. But it has to be just her imagination, or another trick or disguise, because Ruby Redfort doesn't believe in ghosts.

And there is absolutely no way that Valerie Nine-Lives Capaldi, who has been dead for nearly a year, could be walking the streets of Twinford at this very moment.

--

The day progresses.

Ruby is called out to Spectrum later that afternoon to work a case (something minor, something comparatively important), and although Hitch gives her suspicious glances in the car and asks why she's being so quiet, she doesn't tell him what happened at lunch. Not because she doesn't trust him, really, it's more that she doesn't trust herself. Not after everything that's happened. Who's to say she hasn't finally cracked?

She and Blacker and Froghorn spend a happy hour or two cracking a code based on sequential logarithms, and it's sufficiently complicated to take her mind off things. It's good fun, really, and between the three of them, they're capable enough to bend even the most strongly-encoded message into submission. (Ruby takes particular delight in making fun of Froghorn's lack of understanding as to how flip-flop diagrams work. It's leaning towards the cruel, maybe, but come on, any first-year engineering student should be able to understand this stuff.